Location: I stalk the fringes of humanity and dwell amongst the broken and forgotten.

Age: 31

Posts: 243

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Chernobyl & Pripyat April 2009 PICTURE HEAVY

I had seen documentaries on this place and had a morbid fascination with it (as with many things) for some time. I wanted to go so badly largely because of my fixation with apocalyptic things and the curiosity I have about humanity destroying itself...would hate it to happen for real but it doesn't kill the wow factor any less and Chernobyl is the closest thing without a real apocalypse ruining your day. I also wanted to see the closest thing to my childhood fantasy of a world that was just deserted by humans.

It's impossible to see the scale of what happened after the incident at Chernobyl and not be affected in some way. For me, I am a big believer in using technology to improve ourselves and our lives in any way that we can...however Chernobyl gave me a reminder of how things can go so wrong so easily if humanity isn't careful.

I visited here with Wildpeaks, Randomnut and his friend Jim and two people from US I've chatted to for ages and who wanted to see this place as much as I did. I am going to follow Randomnut's wise idea of posting a few posts one one thread to show the different things we found.

The hotel was nice and the soup and pancakes were to die for! I have been told by previous visitors that the food is unpleasant in Chernobyl but other than the fact that we were traumatised by cabbage for every starter, I found it really nice. There again, I'm not a fussy eater in the slightest. The hotel in Chernobyl was nice and the rooms rather spacious. The showers took up and entire small room and looked like decontamination places...probably were.

This was the best holiday I have ever had and my first one abroad on my own (not been since a kid with parents). I was with some wonderful people and it's the first holiday abroad where I preferred the company of the people there to the local strays. However, old habits die hard and I made some fuzzy friends out there.

I called him/her Fallout and I so wanted to steal him/her because s/he was so soft and friendly.

Street dogs. They were all over the Ukraine and many were nervous and would only be around you until your supply of crackers ran out. I did get to pet a couple of them though.

This was our hotel:

This was the warning that greeted every person in their room:

These people provided our food. You get LOTS of food there. Our guide worked for these people:

The real Carnival of Rust. Our guide said that it opened for the children to play a day or so before the disaster.

Once there stood a village. It has long since been buried and the only markers of its final resting place are warning signs for radiation.

From here, Pripyat looked like any other skyline. However, the only reason we could stand here was due to the fact that the river had been blocked off in an attempt to stop the contaminated water flowing to populated areas.